Germany – Bavaria

The rebels studying abroad in Tübingen and I took a trip to the other side of Germany to see the city of München, Bayern.

The long story short is that I encountered three separate bachelorette parties on the train ride there, accepted Deutsch jello shots and other strange gifts (didn’t want to be rude, of course), somehow ended up getting my makeup done by the bride to be as part of her bucket list, got lost a few times at the train station, came across a Bavarian music festival, ate a pig’s knuckle, went to the best club of my life, slept on the ground waiting at the train station on the way back, met an Australian elementary teacher somehow, walked 3 miles home the next morning, and finally returned to my much missed bed around 10am.

Bavarians are what I feel most Americans stereotypically think of when they think of Germans.

The men wear lederhosen, the women wear dirndls, the pretty Oktoberfest dresses, and everyone drinks ridiculously large glasses of beer while eating sauerkraut. I’m not entirely sure I didn’t hear a yodel or two in the Hofbräuhaus. It was pretty German.

The night life is very much alive in München. The buildings are old and beautiful on the outside and modern on the inside, a combination I am quite fond of. Germans and foreigners alike can be found in abundance sitting outside on these cool summer nights. Some are eating dinner, others enjoying the company of friends by playing cards. The atmosphere is pretty chill.

I met more than a couple of Ole Miss students that day, one of whom was from my very very tiny hometown half way around the world. Not to mention the fair shares of Hotty Toddys I received. It definitely makes you realize how small the world really is.

Dachau, one of the more infamous concentration camps, was one of the sadder stops we made. The camp is a museum now and very much preserved the way it was all those years ago, so as to give one a glimpse into what it was like. The Nazis recorded everything very meticulously, and one can see in German the original documents with signatures, photos, and records of everything that happened.

Regardless of how much you know about the Holocaust, I highly recommend going. They go into much more detail about the underlying reasons why something like this happened, the conditions that allowed it to happen, and why in today’s world more than ever we should be vigilant about singling out certain groups of people for political gain. Below is one of the more eerie statues symbolizing the plight of the Jews imprisoned.